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Citation and License

BMC Biophysics 2012, 5:17
doi:10.1186/2046-1682-5-17

Published: 29 August 2012

Abstract

Background

Bacteria dynamically regulate their intricate intracellular organization involving
proteins that facilitate cell division, motility, and numerous other processes. Consistent
with this sophisticated organization, bacteria are able to create asymmetries and
spatial gradients of proteins by localizing signaling pathway components. We use mathematical
modeling to investigate the biochemical and physical constraints on the generation
of intracellular gradients by the asymmetric localization of a source and a sink.

Results

We present a systematic computational analysis of the effects of other regulatory
mechanisms, such as synthesis, degradation, saturation, and cell growth. We also demonstrate
that gradients can be established in a variety of bacterial morphologies such as rods,
crescents, spheres, branched and constricted cells.

Conclusions

Taken together, these results suggest that gradients are a robust and potentially
common mechanism for providing intracellular spatial cues.